Saeid Owhadi told reporters on Sunday that unfortunately there was no information as to whereabouts of 307 Iranian Hajj pilgrims as by Sunday afternoon; “after a correspondence with Saudi Minister of Transport, he issued a directive to facilitate the process of searching for missing pilgrims and transfer of killed pilgrims to the country without necessary formalities; the directive made access to morgues and hospitals has been normalized for Iranian medics and officials and we hope that in the next two days, we will hit a more accurate data on the number of deaths and missing pilgrims,” he detailed.
Still in a relevant story, Deputy of Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization Hamid Mohammadi told Mehr News that it was probable that corpses of 140 pilgrims might be transferred to Iran; “we work to transfer these corpses via Monday’s flight,” he added.
On the recent numbers of missing, killed, and injured pilgrims, he said that since Sunday morning the search operation had been accelerated; “hospitals in Jeddah, Mecca, and Taif have been searched for missing and injured pilgrims, with other teams searching morgues for the possible killed pilgrims’ corpses,” Mohammadi asserted.
“We expect to transfer the identified corpses to country with operations now gaining momentum; during future hours we will receive 140 corpses, and if the legal procedures are carried out, one or two flights will transfer these 140 corpses,” he hoped. “The number of missing pilgrims has become less, with unfortunate rise in the number of killed pilgrims instead; according to the latest data, the number of missing pilgrims is low at 316 and that of killed pilgrims is high at 155,” Mohammadi detailed.
Said Owhadi had told earlier today to a TV program that the number of hospitalized pilgrims was 48 by the latest data; “21 large trucks delivered the corpses of killed pilgrims from different countries in Mina to morgues Sunday morning,” he was quoted as saying. “Due to the busy hospitals, the officials have not announced any figures to other countries; the pictures of 1200 pilgrims are displayed to help with identification in morgues. The scope of the disaster is too great to be communicated to the media, and the figures would exceed 2000,” he had told TV program earlier. “The first group of pilgrims will return to country beginning on Monday,” he said.